01:06 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Just a friendly reminder that if you're anywhere in Europe we're going to have to insist that you come to our MobileRead Reader Meetup in Paris tomorrow. We promise some excellent Sicilian food, and a chance to complain in person to Zelda about how MobileRead is ruining your life.

The important information you need:

When: Saturday, January 31st, 6:30PM to open-end
Where: La Trottinette, 23 rue de la Fontaine au Roi, Paris 11th arrondissement

For more details, including a list of who is going to come, check out this thread (English) and this thread (Français).

03:48 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

As the salivating e-book junkie, you'll be pleased to hear that Plastic Logic is rumored to announce the identity of their first publishing partners during the O'Reilly conference in New York on Feb 9th. Former WSJ and Washington Post reporter Bill Richards writes:

Plastic Logic, a privately held Silicon Valley startup that plans to begin field testing its version of an e-reader later this year, says it will announce the identity of its first publishing partners at the O’Reilly conference. The company has been working for more than a year with Hearst’s secretive e-paper venture, FirstPaper, in Palo Alto. Plastic Logic officials confirm that their 8.5-inch-by-11-inch display screen is designed to accommodate traditional newspaper layouts.

We can't deny that we wish we could wrap our hands tightly around this beauty, slim and light enough to fit into a tuxedo without mussing your lines; alas, as Plastic Logic has recently stated, it's likely not going to happen before early 2010.

Related: Plastic Logic e-reader not before 2010 - Really!, PDAToday's Plastic Logic e-reader hands-on

03:12 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Yesterday we mentioned how Sony is having difficulties in coping with the current market situation. Amazon, on the other hand, seems to have done everything right. As Businessweek reports:

In the fourth quarter, Amazon (AMZN) lured customers and gobbled up market share, producing results that crushed Wall Street expectations. Revenue jumped 18% during the quarter, propelled in large part by overseas shoppers who—though shopping less—are spending more of that shrinking budget online. International sales rose 31%.

What is more interesting to us, of course, is how the Kindle added to Amazon's successful quarter. And here, too, we hear some positive news:

Amazon also trumpeted sales of its electronic book reader the Kindle, though it didn't disclose unit or dollar sales. "We are pleased with the demand," Amazon Chief Financial Officer Thomas Szkutak said during a conference call with analysts and investors. "It exceeded our expectations and we're excited to see the growth that we've seen since we launched it."

During the conference call, Szkutak also said:

We are particularly pleased with Kindle demand during the fourth quarter. We want to remind everyone that Kindle revenue and cost are recognized over a two-year period. The Kindle Store contains the largest collection of e-books available anywhere in the world. Selection increased by 45,000 titles in the fourth quarter, bringing the total to 230,000 titles. 103 out of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers are available and, along with most new releases, are priced at $9.99 or less. In addition, the Kindle Store recently added the Arizona Republic, Baltimore Sun, Orange County Register and USA Today and now offers newspapers from eight of the top ten metro areas in the United States.

And FT reports:

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and founder, did not comment during a call with investors on speculation that the company will unveil a second version of its Kindle electronic book reader on February 9.

He said that the company had been surprised by the strong level of demand for the Kindle in the fourth quarter, which led to it being out of stock for several weeks before Christmas.

“We had anticipated strong demand, and what we saw was stronger than that,” he said.

So everything looks good and rosy at Amazon on its way to world domination, wouldn't you say?

Related: Amazon Kindle 2.0 to be launched on Feb 9th?

06:55 PM by Patricia in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

The London Guardian today is reporting that the a Spanish publisher, Leer-e, is offering two ebooks for 10 euros.

"As book prices go, €5 is a bargain almost anywhere. In Spain, where publishers like to keep prices on paperback novels above the €20 level, it is unheard of.
Now a ground-breaking deal involving Nobel prize winners such as Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Camilo José Cela has seen an offer of two novels for ¤10 on classics by the authors of One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Hive.
There is only one catch: the books do not come on paper, but as digital downloads... "

The full story is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009...arquez-fiction

And here is the publisher's site:
http://www.leer-e.es/
They also appear to be selling Readers: Iliads, Cybooks, Sony readers, the Hanlin etc.

12:28 PM by gwynevans in E-Book General | News

There seems to be a few press-release-type announcements of this, but the list of supported formats seems extensive - PDF, MOBI, DOC, WOLF, MP3, HTML, TXT, CHM, FB2, Djvu, PNG, TIF, GIF, BMP, JPG, PPT, EPUB, LIT, PRC.

The Pixelar e-Reader is an open source format ebook reader, and as such it allows you to read a huge range of digital content. It enables you to ‘carry’ almost as many books, magazines, and documents as you like (including RSS feed downloads). It is a robust yet elegant device which is slim, and as light as a single paperback book.

http://www.pixelar.co.uk/ebookinfo.php

12:19 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Okay, I know that you are wondering why I posted that; it's not news. Here is the news:

All of those ebooks are free.

Most of the books appear to be have come from Project Gutenberg. None of the ones I've checked have a table of contents, nor any illustrations.

It's not a big deal, but this is a nice little treat for Kindle owners. Now a Kindle owner has no need to go elsewhere to find public domain ebooks.

Edit: As Moe the Cat pointed out, apparently Amazon simply took the free offerings from Mobipocket and ported them over to the Amazon store.

11:00 AM by vsalvaggio in E-Book General | News

Finally! Fictionwise is listing nine of Tom Clancy's books for pre-order (Hunt for Red October available Feb 3, the rest Feb 10).

Check it out: Link Fictionwise

Hopefully the rest of the Jack Ryan series won't be too far behind.

03:51 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

As if there wasn't enough bad news in the form of profit warnings and unemployment, it looks like it hit Sony extra hard. Today the company announced their Q3 results, reporting losses of nearly 18 billion yen for the last quarter due to "factors such as the appreciation of the yen, deterioration of results at equity affiliates, slowdown of the global economy and intensified price competition, as well as the decline in the Japanese stock market."

That's a 95 percent drop from the profit recorded a year earlier.

As we heard before, Sony is going to cut 8,000 of its 185,000 jobs around the world, but it's likely that restructuring will continue as Sony is trying to combine their diverse businesses. Skimming through the IR presentation material didn't reveal any specific information regarding Sony's e-book business, which I assume is still too insignifcant in terms of revenue. It's also now part of the Sony Electronics devision which is responsible for all of Sony's U.S.-based electronics and entertainment businesses.